Bill Mittlefehldt: At Anoka High School,
you have to do 10 hours of service to graduate. Now, that’s not
a very high criterion but the fact that we have 3,300 kids makes it significant.
Service learning [credits] are given for doing [things] out of school,
[for example], working with a community partner. The team that was making
signs for four hours with the commissioner and the mayor is getting four
hours of credit. The kids who interacted at the Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency, they’re getting credit for the hours they spent out of
school working on that.

Your government teacher in ninth grade might
say, “Why don’t
you go to a party caucus meeting? Or why don’t you go interview
somebody from the Republican Party?” When you do what you’re
told, you get the service hours because it was done outside of school
to try and understand your community better. In 11th and 12th grade,
I say, “When you do these hours outside of school, I’m going
to give you as many hours as it takes for you to give an effective presentation
before the county, the state, the city, whomever.” The kids who
present [to the City Council] are getting hours of credit for serving
the community. We try and use it as a vehicle for reinforcing and affirming
their contributions to the community. It’s a very cheap reward
but it shows the kids that somebody’s paying attention and we’re
affirming the best part of their adolescent character. We try and make
sure that all the kids have a venue outside the school to demonstrate
their service.

[Students] have to fill out a form and turn in the hours, and we log
it on the computer that’s keeping track for the entire school. Just
to manage that is significant. So we have one staff person who gets one
hour a day to manage the entire database. Service learning at Anoka High
School is managed through our Office of Service Learning. However, it’s
administered through the social studies department, generally speaking.